Watch: Climate, Covid and COP26
As all nations grapple with the impacts of Covid-19, climate change has not gone away. If the recovery packages being developed around the world are not green then our climate future may be blacker than ever.
- Will Covid-19 derail climate action?
- Can this global pandemic teach us anything about to tackling the climate emergency?
- What should the delayed United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow next year deliver?
In this special online ECCI event to discuss 'Climate, Covid and COP26' (recorded on Thursday 21 May) the world-renowned climate scientist and communicator Professor Katharine Hayhoe is joined by leading experts drawn from across the University of Edinburgh community - including Prof Elizabeth Bomberg, Prof Gabi Hegerl, Dr Sarah Ivory and Dr Hannah Ritchie - giving insights into the politics, business, science and communication of climate change in a post-Covid world.
Part of ECCI's countdown to COP26 series, the event drew an incredible global audience with around 600 attendees signing up for the virtual session from all around the world. A blog, authored by the speakers, answering some of the unanswered audience questions will be published next week.
ECCI Climate, Covid and COP26 from Sanctus Media Ltd on Vimeo.
Speakers
Katharine Hayhoe
Katharine Hayhoe is an accomplished atmospheric scientist who studies climate change and why it matters to us here and now. She is also a remarkable communicator who has received the American Geophysical Union’s climate communication prize, the Stephen Schneider Climate Communication award, and been named to a number of lists including Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, Foreign Policy’s 100 Leading Thinkers, and FORTUNE magazine’s World’s Greatest Leaders.
Katharine is currently a professor and directs the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. She has a B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Toronto and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from the University of Illinois. Image credit: Ashley Rodger
Prof Elizabeth Bomberg, University of Edinburgh
Elizabeth is Professor of Environmental Politics and Programme Director for the MSc Global Environment, Politics and Society. She is currently serving as the Co-Director of the University’s Global Environment and Society Academy (GESA) and sits on the University Court. Prof Bomberg was educated in California before moving to Britain. She has taught at universities in the US, UK and Belgium, and has held research posts in Brussels and (most recently) at the University of California, Berkeley. She has led research projects on community energy, climate mobilization and shale governance. Her current research interests include comparative environmental politics and policy, with a particular focus on climate activism.
Prof Gabi Hegerl, University of Edinburgh
Gabi Hegerl is professor of climate system science at the University of Edinburgh. She is originally from Munich, Germany, and has in the past worked at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany and the University of Washington, Texas A&M, and Duke University in the US. Gabi Hegerl’s work focuses on identifying the drivers and mechanisms of observed climate change. She published some of the first studies detecting climate change in observations, developed a method that distinguishes between possible causes for climate change, and estimated climate sensitivity. Gabi’s recent work has focused on attributing causes to changes in precipitation and extreme events, and to temperature changes over the last millennium. She has also had key roles in past IPCC assessments.
Dr Sarah Ivory, University of Edinburgh
Dr Sarah Birrell Ivory is a Lecturer in Climate Change and Business Strategy at the University of Edinburgh Business School (UEBS). She is a Co-Director of the Centre for Business and Climate Change (CBCC) which develops dedicated teaching and research relating to aspects of business and management impacted by, or which have an impact on, climate change issues. She is also Deputy Director of the Sustainable Business Institute (SBI) which is an external facing organisation engaging with, consulting, and speaking to the business and wider community in relation to sustainability issues. She is a past-Chair of the British Academy of Management Sustainable and Responsible Business Special Interest Group (SIG). Dr Ivory has been teaching at the University of Edinburgh Business School for over a decade with an interest in Sustainability, Social Enterprise, and Critical Thinking Pedagogy.
Dr Hannah Ritchie, University of Oxford @_HannahRitchie
Hannah Ritchie is a researcher at the Oxford Martin School's Programme for Global Development at the University of Oxford. There her work is published at the online publication OurWorldinData.org. The publication aims to present empirical research on the world's largest problems and how to address them, through the use of interactive data visualisations and explainers. Her research is focused on the intersection between sustainability and global development, with a focus on how to couple economic development and improved living standards with environmental sustainability. Hannah holds a BSc in Environmental Geoscience, and an MSc in Carbon Management from the University of Edinburgh. There, her doctoral studies focused on the assessment of global food systems and their capacity to address malnutrition and environmental sustainability simultaneously. At the University of Edinburgh she was also a lecturer in Sustainability, Society and Environment, and worked on the development of teaching programmes directed towards interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability. She has worked on a number of sustainability consulting and industry-led projects.
Chair - Prof Dave Reay, ECCI Executive Director
Dave joined as ECCI's Executive Director in January 2020. He is also Professor of Carbon Management at the University of Edinburgh and Director of Policy at ClimateXChange. Dave has worked at the University of Edinburgh for almost 20 years, working closely with ECCI from its inception in 2011. Dave has authored over 100 articles on climate change, including 5 books and is also an advisor for the Scottish Government on rural policy and climate change. His latest project involves managing his farm on the West Coast of Scotland to sequester a lifetime's carbon emissions.